And February was so long that it lasted into March
by winter machine
Summary: "It's a cheap trick. It works." Amelia, Sam, Addison.  Addiction, secrets, sex.  FMS prompt.  Adult themes. Dark.


_FMS prompt. Amelia's using, Sam's judging, and Addison's somewhere in the crossfire. Mature themes; you've been warned._

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><p><strong><em>And February was so long that it lasted into March...<em>**

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><p>"You want coddling, you want rehab speak? You're not getting it from me. Get up." His arm arcs in shadow and the sheets twitch over her legs.<p>

"Go away."

"You're selfish." The bed sinks underneath her as he lowers himself onto the mattress. "Do you care what you're doing to Addison?"

"Do you?" she counters, half opening her eyes. She's always been best on defense, letting others wage the war while she preserves what's left of her reserves.

"That's none of your business."

"And I'm none of yours."

A gust of cool air hits naked flesh and she opens her eyes, not wanting to miss what she knows will be a look of embarrassed pride in those hooded dark eyes.

"You're taking drugs again."

"So?"

"So stop!" he barks, a muscle in his neck jumping. Amy thinks for a surprised moment that she'd like to bite it.

"I'm an addict, don't you know?" She sits halfway up, her breasts righting themselves over her ribs and she enjoys the way he struggles not to look.

"Don't give me that. It's a choice. You're making a _choice._"

"Really." She sits all the way up now, nothing but a scrap of fabric between her and his judgment.

"We all make choices."

That's what he says dully when they're finished, when she's sitting with her back to him studying her toenails and wondering why people keep trying to change her. He felt like he sounded: big and opinionated, judgmental, spreading her apart and announcing himself, only to deflate and want to apologize afterwards.

He's got his head in his hands now. Amy's broken better men before; she leaves him there and goes to work, stopping only once along the way.

"You're high," Addison accuses later that day and Amy shakes her head. "Just ask Sam," she says sweetly.

She should be sorry, since Addison loves her, but Addie is needy and _love _is just a word that's all stick and no carrot. Doesn't she deserve this, Sam's fingers inside her, his lips at her neck, the way he makes her scream in Addison's old bed and then goes next door and strokes Addison to sleep in his own house? She gets the first of him now. The best of him. And why shouldn't she? She's been losing to Addison her whole life. Her brother. Mark. One by one Addison's taken these things from her, lost interest like a child with a plastic toy who still whimpers for more.

Whimpering. These are the sticky-soft words she associates with her former sister-in-law. Cloying. The kind of person who sends valentines without irony, who professes to love Christmas, who hasn't yet learned to stop asking people to love her. _No,_ is Amelia's response every time underneath the things she fears.

She misses February on the east coast, wet and grey. She wants whisper-thin clouds and the bleak way car horns penetrate the fog. It's always the same here, sunny and mild. She might as well be on an airplane but without the delicious promise of somewhere else. Los Angeles is a hamster wheel and she's trapped; fingers in lab gloves prod her until she runs again. It's February but it could be any time and Addison is standing in her doorway with that _look _in her eyes. Amelia can see Addison as a child so clearly - when Amy herself was nothing more than a far-off counting mistake in her parents' creaking old four poster. Addie would have been the girl who played hopscotch a foot from the other kids because she needed an invitation. She would have hovered in doorways. Amelia's been to enough therapy to know that people who spend their whole lives waiting like that are never going to get what they were looking for then. Amy's not like that - she had a fantastic mom. A top-notch mom. June fucking Cleaver with all her own desires sublimated and shoved into the pocket of her housecoat. Deny, deny, deny. Deny her husband's dead, deny her daughter's a wreck, deny the pleasures of her own flesh. She's had denial modeled to her her whole life.

Fuck denial.

"Addison, are you in or out?"

Addison rests a hand on her hip but doesn't move. "Funny, that's what I said to Sam. About babies, I mean."

Amy knows the drill: she's supposed to pretend to be interested. Pretend she cares that her sister-in-law is _old_ now, past her prime, past her chances. Amy thinks about the wrinkled dried apricots she used to mix into her cereal, contrasts it for a cruel mental moment with the way it feels to sink her teeth into the soft giving flesh of a ripe fruit. She can pretend.

"Are you okay, Amelia? It's just that I-"

"I'm fine."

"Sam thinks-"

Amelia chokes laughter into expensive down pillows. Sam has an opinion now, does he? Sam fucked her in this very bed last night, her gasps muffled in the same thousand-count cotton. He pushed her into the mattress like he wanted her buried, pinned her hands when she tried to scratch a memory into the curiously soft skin over his shoulders. He hates how much he wants her, and this - this is where Amy can flourish. Self-hatred covers them both like the feather-light duvets Addison insists on. Shake it out to keep its shape.

"Amelia, are you sure-"

"Addie, I just need to sleep." With that lie that is a truth, Addison takes the hint.

_Fucking finally._

She could measure her life - if she wanted to - in rooms ten feet from a man who isn't giving Addison what she craves. She was so far involved she watched Derek and Addison's marriage fester and break apart from the inside, like those flies who burrow their way into sheep and eat a terrible death upon them. She watches now with naked interest; it must be so painful and yet perhaps freeing to have so much _need._ Baby sister doesn't ask for much, and doesn't get it either. There's that empty-ballroom feel even when it's just the three of them, with Addison half wrapped around Sam, laughing too loudly at his jokes, stealing occasional glances around the room to see if other people notice what a handsome couple they make.

Amelia's often wondered how different her sister-in-law's life might have been if she weren't beautiful. Without that hair, the legs, the face, that honeyed voice, where would she have poured all her need? Amelia lets her gaze slide down from the fine lines webbing their way around that sensual mouth to the infinitesimally puckered skin at her neck. The neck, Amelia remembers Addie saying once, is the one place a woman can never really hide her age. No, wait, there were two places, but she can't remember the other one.

She can't remember anything when Sam fucks her against the wall of her office and she tingles everywhere: where he pried her open, where the crushed white powder seared her nostrils, the bits of her neck she thought might come off in his teeth.

"Addison can't find out," he lectures and she rolls her eyes at his stern tone. "You're making a _choice_," she reminds him witheringly, and wraps hands and lips around him to remind him who's in charge.

It's not enough, so she slips in and watches. Addie is as anxious to please in bed as out - she remembers that from one awkward long-ago Christmas walk-in - and she's writhing under him, her moans too perfectly studied to fool Amy. She really is beautiful though, beautiful wrapping on the kind of present you'll have to spend the rest of your life working to keep alive. Like a plant or a puppy or something else that takes and takes and whose anxious affection is really nothing more than-

"I love you," Addison murmurs into his neck and Amelia is embarrassed for her, just for a second. Then she moves again, all milky-white skin and coral-tipped breasts and those endless legs and Amy thinks she'd like to be Sam for a moment, like to straddle the distance of her hips and drive into her, feel the mattress give beneath her since Addison won't, quiet that desperation just for a moment.

She catches Sam's eye. Arousal battles betrayal in his expression and she wonders briefly what sex with him might be like without it. Not worth her time, she decides, and runs her tongue slowly over her lips. It's a cheap trick. It works.

"What the -" Addison grabs for the sheet. "Amelia!"

"Addie, it's okay." Sam's soothing her, hands all over her, and Amy can see from the doorway the way she's trembling in his arms. Slowly, he unwinds the sheet from her clenched fingers, slides it back down her legs. Amy tries to access pity and it's not there. Guilt, shame, they all taste like thrill right now. A tear slides down Addison's cheek; answering moisture decorates Amy's thighs.

"You don't have to do this," Sam is whispering to her, and Amy shakes her head even as she moves closer. In case it wasn't already apparent, Sam doesn't know Addison at all. Of course she'll do it. She'll do it and more; she'll stand in the doorway or a foot away from the game and beg with her eyes and offer with her lips. She'll do anything and doing anything is really nothing so she lies limp against Sam and Amy watches him read her desperation as assent. He strokes her throat lightly and Amy climbs carefully onto the bed, rising up on her knees.

Sam's got her spread out across him like an offering, as if he knows she's what Amy been trying to capture.

"It's all right. See?" Sam is stroking Addison, her hair and her head and her arms, and Amy moves close enough to see the fine baby hairs at her sister-in-law's thighs standing at attention. The line between fear and arousal is thin after all, it's a whisper-thin cloud, a duvet cast to the floor, the width of a thick dark finger parting slick pink flesh. His hands open her and Amy wonders if she could slip inside, rid herself of this skin.

Amy leans in and Sam whispers in her ear, the terrible things she calls herself in the dark.

His fingers are moving fast and practiced, Addison arching up off him and back down, one of his hands tracing soothingly frantic circles over her slowly pinkening skin. Amy reaches out a hand, brushes the rough pebble of a nipple and Addison makes a mewling cat sound before Sam's fingers distract her again. Red pinpricks are spreading on her thighs, her hips, the scent of her thick in the air and Sam flips her onto her belly, pushes into her with one swift motion and Amy feels it between her own legs. He's tugging at her hands, the answering jerks in her body making the mattress shake; the expensive duvet is all the friction Amy needs to make her eyes blur. Then Sam is pulling at her, at both of them, as if he's the one designing this, and Amy slides down until Addison's lips make a protesting noise right into the slick flesh no one has touched yet. Addison jumps, turning her head away - maybe not liking it, but four hands coax her gently back down. She stays, Amy's hands in her hair, Sam's fingers moving underneath her. Everyone is too slippery for purchase and Addison finally pulls away, rolling onto her back and running the back of her hand along her mouth and looking at Amy like it's her fault.

Amy just slides down her body; she spreads her hands and Addie's thighs open; she thrills to the puppet power of her position and pushes them further apart. Addison is moaning softly, Sam is sucking on her neck now; the bed smells like sex and sorrow and someone else's life.

Addison's fingers are tangled in Amy's hair, yanking and the pain makes her eyes water. Tears and dripping wet and salty and she's stuck in the ocean's seaweed-shallows. Addison screams high and loud until some part of Sam muffles it and when Amy draws back, tongue thick and heavy, she sees the two of them wrapped around each other in a way that makes her stomach turn. So she runs a hand down Sam's back to reorient him, lies on her back and lets her legs fall open, watches Addison watching her.

Sam fucks her slow and deep; Addison holds a pillow to her chest; her mouth a puckered o of something Amy doesn't know and doesn't care to know and the cramp in her hip as she stretches to accommodate him feels like victory. Sam is motioning above her, gesturing, and then Addison is hovering over Amy, her sea-green eyes midnight in the dark. Cool fingers slide between their damp bodies, Addison's fine-tuned surgeon's hand. They used to play jacks on the back deck - Addie was the only one who'd play with her for long - nimble fingers separating one set of metal spikes from another. Now her hand moves too fast or too soft and it's not working until Amy opens her eyes again and sees the mirror of self-disgust in Addison's huge limpid eyes and that's what pushes her over the edge.

Afterwards, she stands there and surveys what she's done. Addison seems less vulnerable now, curled into Sam's side, cheeks rosy from arousal, hair sweat-slicked down her back. Amelia watches her and sees the way she was before, spread out and open, trembling with disbelief.

A week later, Addison stalks through her doorway.

"You bitch," she cries, and Amy thinks she must know that that wasn't the first time. Amy shrugs, sheets falling from bare shoulders, nipples hardening automatically at the rage in Addison's eyes. Then Addie is shaking her so hard Amelia can feel phlegm knocked loose in her throat and start to choke her. There's a blur around her eyes when she focuses on the iron fingers sunk deep into the flesh of her arms, the faintly freckled hands, the spiderweb of lines digging in and remembers the other place a woman can never hide her age: her hands.

She closes her eyes and lets Addison vent her rage until exhaustion makes her drop into a sobbing mess on the floor. Amy rubs the bruises imprinted on her arms, spits a mouthful of shame onto the white carpet and lets it bubble there. She looks at the crumpled form, remembers those long white legs wrapped around her, the way Addison's thighs sealed her ears shut until blood and ocean rushed into her head. If she could still feel, she might feel sorry, but she just stands in the doorway, neither in nor out.

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><p><em>Title from Dar Williams, "February."<em>


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